Something for 2010?

A new year, a new beginning and lots of events for the year ahead. Here are some of the things I’m looking forward to in 2010.

Architecture

Cité de la Mode et du Design
It’s around two years late, but finally it seems that the Cité de la Mode et du Design will open this Spring. I’m being a little unfair because the part of the structure that houses the ‘Institut français de la Mode’ has already been in operation for a year, but it has often seemed like this great, green hulk on the river would never open.

In reality, it is difficult to understand what has caused the delays. The main structure of the building, the concrete shell of the old ‘Magasins généraux’ establishment, was already in place and the green wood and glass exterior was clipped on to it a long time ago. The design by Dominique Jakob and Brendan Macfarlane, with its riverside garden and promenade will certainly pull in the visitors, but could the problems have arisen from trying to actually find a purpose for the structure? Will there be anything more than a café and some shops here when it finally does open? The answer to these questions should arrive in May or June.
28-36 quai d'Austerlitz,
M° Gare d’Austerlitz or Chevalret

The Louise-Catherine
Alongside the Cité de la Mode et du Design is moored a rather decrepit old barge, and it is easy to overlook the fact that it is an important monument in the city. This should change when renovations to the Louise-Catherine get underway, but during this period it will still be a site to visit. The barge, which was redesigned by Le Corbusier in the 1930s as a shelter for the Salvation Army, will be turned into a temporary sculpture by the architect Shuhei Endo. It will be wrapped in a metallic spiral known as a ‘Springtechture’ for the duration of the renovations.

Fondation Louis Vuitton pour l’art contemporain
After the American Center alongside the Parc de Bercy, Paris will get its second Frank Gehry building this year. Paid for by Bernard Arnault, President of the LVMH luxury goods group, the Fondation Louis Vuitton pour l’art contemporain will be situated in the Jardin d’Acclimatation in the Bois de Boulogne and will house works owned by the group.

Gaîté Lyrique
Previously a famous ‘opérette’ theatre in Paris which was once managed by Jacques Offanbach, the Gaité Lyrique should finally reopen this year after being closed for 19 years. Interestingly, it will focus on digital technology with studios and workshops for artists working in electronic and robotic spheres.
As well as these rehearsal and creation spaces though, there will also be performance areas and a café for the general public.

Events

Année de la Russie en France
Each year France organises artistic and educational exchange events with another chosen country, but this year's promises to be especially interesting. There has long been mutual fascination and admiration between France and Russia meaning that the two countries will want to surpass themselves to prove the superiority of their artistic heritage.

The main event in Paris will be “Sainte Russie” at the Louvre from the 5th March to the 24th May, a look at 900 years of Russian art, up to the 17th century, in collaboration with more than ten Russian museums.

However, both countries will also want to promote contemporary culture, so look out for events at the Palais de Tokyo and regular visits from musicians and dance troupes.

Crime et Châtiment
As previously mentioned, it is the year of Russia in France, so what could be more natural than taking a title from Dostoyevsky for an art exhibition? The theme of the exhibition is also of course positively Dostoyevskian; the esthetics of violence. The period covered is from 1791 at the height of revolutionary bloodletting, to the 30th September 1981, the date when capital punishment was abolished in France. In these two centuries, art and literature developed an obsession with crime and criminals, and of course the punishment that followed. This exhibition features paintings from Goya, Géricault, Picasso and Magritte amongst others, as well as documents and photos. The museum also points out that certain images may shock!
Musée d'Orsay

15th March to 27th June

Paris inondé 1910
Exactly 100 years ago in January 1910, Paris experienced a "semaine terrible" with non-stop rain that brought flooding to almost the whole of the city. To mark this event, the Galerie des bibliothèques de la Ville de Paris has organised an exhibition around the ample photographic documentation of the floods. Interestingly, such floods are said to happen once every hundred years or so in the city…
Galerie des bibliothèques de la Ville de Paris
22, rue Malher 75004 (M° St-Paul)

8th January to 28th March

Exhibitions

Several big names this year, but curiously almost uniquely artists from outside France.

Turner et ses peintres
After being the big attraction in London in 2009, this Turner show transfers to Paris at the beginning of this year. Surely less well known on this side of the Channel, it should nevertheless be the hottest ticket of the Spring and give people an insight into the artist and his many influences.
Grand Palais
22nd February to 24th May

Du Greco à Dalí: Les grands maîtres espagnols
After a very successful show on Flemish art, the wonderful Musée Jacquemart-André will this year concentrate on Spanish painters. Around 50 paintings from 25 Spanish artists including Picasso and Miró will be on display.
Musée Jacquemart-André
12th March to 1st August

Lucian Freud: L'atelier
This exhibition is based around a recreation of the London studios of one today's greatest living painters.
Centre Pompidou
10th March to 19th July

Basquiat
An artist with a much shorter life-span than Freud, but whose creations show no sign of going out of fashion.
Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris
15th October to 30th January 2011

Edvard Munch ou l'anti-cri
Munch is best known for his tortured creations such as 'The Scream', but this exhibition will attempt to show a different, lighter and more colourful aspect to his work.
Pinacothèque de Paris
19th February to 18th July

Paris Highrises

There has been much discussion recently about whether the Paris skyline should be allowed to creep upwards towards the height of other leading cities around the world. The current Mayor of the city, Bertrand Delanoë, is globally in favour so long as the new towers do not spoil exceptional views and are of sufficient architectural quality. His first project is Le Triangle which is planned for 2012, but other areas on the periphery of the city have also been earmarked for new highrise projects in the coming years.

Historically, the height of the buildings in the city has always been relative to the width of the street on which they stand. In general, this corresponds to a maximum of 31 metres in the centre, and 37 metres towards the edges of the city. However, as has often been the case in France, there have been many exceptions, notably in the period between 1967 and 1977.

Those who seek therefore to defend a supposed Paris exception and the homogentiy of the architecture seemingly overlook the fact that the city is already home to many tall buildings. They may be on a smaller scale to other places around the world, but they are as interesting in their various forms as in any other city on the planet. Here are a few examples.

Personally I would like to see more of these buildings, and yet I can also say that I wouldn't like to live in one! Nevertheless, as Germaine Greer pointed out in an article for The Guardian newspaper, "towers supply the most prestigious accommodation in the world". She also points out that if designed and maintained carefully, they are the most efficient forms of construction, something that Le Corbusier had also demonstrated. So is there a place for quality highrises in Paris?

Vous Êtes Ici

I recently received an e-mail from a visitor in New Hampshire asking if I did requests. It is not really something I have thought about before, but I was very happy to oblige. It was a simple enough request, written with a touch of melancholy, and I thought I might be able to bring a little seasonal cheer.

"I have always wanted to find a particular image that I never had a chance to take a photo of. It is an image on the side of a building, facing west, which is visible from the bus line 26 on Rue La Fayette. I often passed that mural thinking each time, "next time I will get off the bus and take a photo of it". But I never did"

As I approached the mural, camera in hand, a thought came to me. I was becoming somebody else's eyes. This person had passed by the mural many times but how closely had he ever observed it? It was an arresting image on a banal bus journey, a colourful mural glimpsed through windows mapped with scratches and condensation. It had been powerful enough to make a lasting impression, but would the photographic reality match the picture in his mind's eye?

As I walked around the building, observing it from every possible angle, another fact became evident. From each of the angles, the picture was different. From underneath, the head of the man disappeared, and it was a Space Invader in the foreground that grabbed the attention. On the left hand side, the male figure was very clear. On the right-hand side, bathed in a streak of sunshine, it was three words that were brought into focus; Vous êtes ici.

Alongside the three words was a train sitting in a station. My visitor had mentioned a man taking off his hat, surrounded by trains and other machines of transportation, but the image I saw before me was mostly a representation of the city of Paris. Why was it the train that remained etched in his mind? The answer could be found 20 metres further along. After flashing past this mural, he would have crossed the La Fayette bridge that spans the Gare de l'Est. Two neighbouring features of his bus journey had perhaps fused in his memory.

One person who would appreciate this is the artist who sketched the mural. François Boisrond is mostly associated with the Figuration libre group of artists who were briefly famous in the 1980s, but today he is interested in everyday life and how this affects the perceptions we have of our surroundings. His paintings of Paris place him in the position of an observer, showing how we are often overwhelmed by the noise of the city. He has painted a series of pictures where typically Parisian scenes can only just be made out behind large advertising boards, and interestingly in the context of this post, views of the city through a car windscreen. This time, the observer himself created something that has changed a perception of the city.

I took the photos and have posted them here, but will my visitor recognise the images I captured? I am here in his place, with time to clear out the clutter of everyday life and choose the best angles, but by doing this have I also burned away a cherished vision of a happy time in his life?

A Top 12 of the Noughties in Paris, Part Twelve

Le Grand Paris (2009)
Paris is the city museum, the place that found an ideal beauty then froze it in time. It is a dense, tightly-packed city where there are only pocket-sized plots left to develop. So where does the city go from here?

As this decade has wound to a close, this is the question that politicians, architects and urbanists have been asking themselves. Everybody has different ideas, but they all agree on one thing - it must grow outwards. In the 21st century, the time has come for a 'grand Paris'.

Nicolas Sarkozy has been a controversial and prickly President, but if he has had one idea that everybody has supported it is this one. He convoked international teams of architects and challenged them to come up with new visions of the city. It gave birth to a wide range of fantastic projects and a real feeling that Paris could become the first true 21st century city.

However, politicians are more pragmatists than visionaries. It is rare that they forget other agendas and concentrate on a greater good, and the grand Paris that will result from these discussions will surely be nothing like the city proposed by the teams of architects. The first proposals have seemingly forgotten affordable housing and green spaces, and are concentrating on a very French theme; rapid transport systems. It is not clear what purpose these will serve beyond bringing significant quantities of business to French construction companies, and they will certainly not solve any of the city's problems.

Is there still hope for a radical and ambitious grand Paris in the years ahead? Perhaps the most imaginative of all the propositions, and the one that I would love to see, is Antoine Grumbach's river route to the sea. Paris would become a city that would stretch 170km to Le Havre and the seaside, developing the infrastructure between but still respecting the natural environment. Of all the projects, it would probably one of the cheapest of all to put in place, which also gives it a greater chance of succeeding.

Grumbach's project is more a different way to view the city than a giant construction project. It opens the city up to its surroundings, and brings the river back to a role of central importance, a resource that Paris shares with many of the surrounding towns. The real grand Paris will not be a concrete metropolis, but rather a change in people's mentalities. The grand Paris will be a city no longer surrounded by physical or metaphysical barriers.

A Top 12 of the Noughties in Paris, Part Eleven

House Prices Drop in Paris (2008)
Ten years ago, at the dawning of the new century, I made a major decision. I bought a flat. At the time it was a terrifying decision to make, with what seemed like huge sums of money involved. Buying a flat was just not a particularly French thing to do, and was a relatively complex and bureaucratic exercise. Couldn't I just continue to rent like the majority of people in France.

What a difference a decade makes. The moment I have picked out here was the month that prices in Paris finally stopped climbing and went into reverse, but some people believed it would never happen. From 1998 to 2008 prices in the city climbed 190%. I had been one of the winners.

House prices have always meant little to me. If I want to move, I'll always have to live somewhere, and if prices rise across the board, well I won't be better off anywhere else. I was on the ladder though, and admittedly it was a secure place to be. As the decade moved along, I could see who the victims of this inflation were. Colleagues who wanted to become first-time buyers found it impossible to purchase anything affordable in the city, and those renting saw prices increase too. Ten years ago, Paris had been an unimagined bargain. Now it had become a city of speculation like most of the rest of the world.

I'm happy to live in my purchase not because it has made me theoretical amounts of money but because it is a roof over my head. It is also nice to think that there is a little corner of Paris that belongs to me.

It is not clear what will happen to property prices in the city in the years ahead. As the decade draws to a close, house prices have begun to sneak back up again but they will surely drop back to more realistic levels soon. They will not collapse though like they have in the UK and US, because banks were more cautious here and because there is still a severe lack of housing in the city. The bubble finally stopped growing, but it will not burst. The next decade though will be one of very few bargains in the city.